Swenglish - Svengelska - When Swedes speak English, and what you can learn from it! 

I remember once talking to a Swedish girl and she said “she’s cake” and in my mind I was like mmm what?? What do you mean? She’s cake? And then I figured she must have been trying to say “cheesecake” and when I realized that I bursted into tears from laughing. And no, for the record, I was not making fun of her for saying “she’s cake “ instead of “cheesecake” I just thought it sound so cute that it made me laugh hahahaha

I love how you incorporate real-life footages of people because it clearly shows the examples that you are discussing. Way to go! :)

In Ireland, we pronounce English 'dis' 'dat' 'tink' for 'this, that, think' as well in many dialects around the country! This is such a fascinating insight!

As an English teacher in Hungary I can tell you that Hungarians have pretty much the same problems, although their version is called Hunglish. Love the channel!

You might be interested to know that the Swedish (and Norwegian) accents greatly influenced the Minnesotan accent in the U.S. .. We have the largest population of Swedish- and Norwegian-Americans in the country, despite being a relatively small state. Over 1.3 million of us here! The long vowels are common, and those with a really heavy Minnesota accent even demonstrate pitch to words. As for Swedish, I've found a lot of similarities between the vowels in Swedish and the vowels in the British English accent. So much so that I try to pronounce the vowels that way, and it's helped improve my pronunciation quite a bit.

I can tell you that when Swedes learn English, the accent is very subtle. There are variations of course, but there is certainly shared DNA in the way the language is spoken.

As a Swedish-speaking Finn (with Swedish as my native language but with a VERY different "language melody" compared to Swedes), I was told that my accent was really hard to pinpoint for foreigners. I studied abroad for a while and international students had no idea where I was from or what my native language was. I for sure have an accent in English but it's so uncommon and fairly "neutral" that they couldn't really tell that I was from Finland. It's not like the monotone "rally English" (FI: rallienglanti) you hear from Formula 1 drivers like Kimi Räikkönen who has Finnish as his native language, but not as melodic as a Sweden-Swedish accent. I found it quite entertaining to inform people that Swedish-speaking Finns have been around for centuries and the Swedish we speak sounds nothing like modern day Sweden-Swedish :D

One of my favorite episodes of "I Love Lucy" was when Lucy was trying to improve Ricky's pronunciation of English before their baby was born. They used the words...through; rough; bouges; and bough, and such. I would be, (am), bad at trying to pronounce swedish words too but it still makes me laugh everytime I watch it.

Thanks for this fun video. I was once in a situation in London where someone's strong foreign accent led me to understand "he's dead" when what the person was trying to say was "his dad". Caused me some concern at first, but made me laugh afterwards.

I can think of two more examples that I see very often at work, both related to asking questions. 1. Since the word in Swedish can be used both in the sense of and , and since it is almost always used at the end of questions when it's a request ("Kan jag få en kop kaffe, tack?"), it's very common in Swenglish for questions to end in when it should have been , like: "Can I have a cup of coffee, thanks?" which can sound both condescending and confusing. Once I understood how is used in Swedish, this pattern became very clear to me. 2. This one might be extra common for those with closer proximity to the Norwegian border: upspeak, or "upwards inflection", when making questionable/uncertain statements. I've seen this happen almost 100% of the time when hearing people from Skåne and Oslo speaking in English, they would put the tone "curve" of statements like "And I think this and that" in a way that sounds like a question, as in "And I think this and that?". It's very confusing at first, coming from languages that have zero or little upspeak. My basic research on the topic, plus my experience with Swedish culture, tells me that this is a side effect of Jantelagen, as in people trying to be extremely humble about what they say as to not sound too certain about statements (so they make it sound like they are doubting/questioning their own opinions). PS: Den här videon kändes ännu bättre än genomsnittet, bra jobbat!

It's good that you included the "nå, I dont tink så"-guy. A Swenglish classic that one. 😂 I too make so much of these errors you mention... Like the Swedish "j" in "juice", or the "sheep" instead of "cheap". Have a bounch of international friends, both as a gamer and IRL, and I speak English every single day due to it, but those errors just dont go away, at least not unless I spend a silly amount of focus on my pronunciation... 😅🤪 Love the vid!

I like your videos. They're fun. Personally, I love the sound of English spoken with a Swedish accent. I may switch over to learning svenska once I have nailed norsk. Ha det bra ❤️

Love this video 😁 Probably many of them have an accent but you should see how older people in my country speak English 🤣 Most other nationalities are not bilingual or nearly bilingual, That's something to be very proud of 🇸🇪👏🏻

Love it 😍 Tack det var väldigt roligt 🤩

Fun video! I personally love the Swenglish accent. ❤️

Asså ..Du e bara så bäst... So fun and educating for both Swedes and the world out there ..!

Amo los acentos extranjeros (sueco, alemán y noruego) en mi idioma 💕(y también en el inglés). Eso es lo que los hace originales

Grazie tante per il video :)

I have an Anglo-Russo accent from speaking Russian off and on for so many years. I tried scrubbing it off a few times but it just comes back so, I tend to embrace it now instead of hide it. Also, I struggle to write in most languages. Speaking, is a lot easier for me, than trying to write. When I say, I know how to speak Russian. I usually, get this long comment but, I specifically, said speak not write lol.

This is amazing, what is even more amazing is danish people speaking English. They don't have any accent what so ever, you can't easily tell their gibberish from northern English gibberish!

Hysteriskt kul! Bravo :)

This gave me a good few chuckles, thank you for that :) I now realise that my Swedish pronunciation has been greatly helped by the Svengelska spoken by youtubers like Robbaz...

Loved your video! It was great. The words you were having trouble with….. THOUGH…..pronounce it like THOW. THOUGHT……pronounce it like THORT TOUGH…pronounce it like TUFF. Hope that helps! Looking forward to more of your videos soon. Tack!

Maybe to help on your personal struggle: Though, Thought and tough could be simplified in your mind, by considering: all have the same 'ough' pattern in the middle, but 'though' has a higher emphasis on 'h' in the spelling (so h= hold on! or hey now! as 'though' is usually offering a counter argument or option), 'thought' is all about thinking and thus has a higher emphasis on 't' in the spelling with an extra 't' and 'tough' is the shortest, and strongest of the three words, so with Onomatopoeia because this is a harsh sound and feels like what the word describes it may be easier to differentiate? Though - think 'h', hold on! Thought, think 't', I'm thinking! and Tough - think short and harsh!

Funny thing is most of what I know about Swedish/Sweden is from Joel/Vargskelethor, and a bit of The Click, both can sound so english that I forget they're swedish.

I'm a native Spanish speaker and found that pronunciation of "una cerveza" really fun :D

One subtle thing that I often notice about Swedes speaking English is the palatalised k, especially at the end of words (e.g. speak, like).

This is really fun swedish 👌

Tack sa jattemycket ! 💐 💐 💐

Eehhehehe I just noticed the title of the vid: Swenglish. We have something like that here too! Singaporean English: Singlish. Basically English coupled with words and/or grammatical structures from Chinese, Chinese dialects, Malay and even Tamil. Let's say you're hungry, and you want to eat somewhere with a friend. Normally, you'd ask them "Where do you want to eat?" Here, though, we ask "Where you want to eat?" or "You want to eat where ah?" We also frequently add in sentence fillers (A LOT of sentence fillers), which is another special thing about Singlish. For other languages, language fillers may not have a role or play such a big role, but here, the same word said with a different tone can mean different things. "So you bought the groceries already ah" (a dragged out "ah"): confirming groceries have been bought in a sentence "So you bought the groceries already ah" (a short snappy "ah"): asking whether groceries have been bought in a question "Just follow me to the mall lah" (a low-pitched and dragged out "lah"): requesting politely for the other person to follow you to the mall "Just follow me to the mall lah!" (a high-pitched and angry sounding "lah"): urgently or impatiently asking/ordering/telling the other person to follow you to the mall. Not exactly polite. On the topic of mispronounced words though? Pretty common in Slavic languages too and I still get teased for that lol: either for my rolled or tapped 'r's or pronouncing 'the' as 'ze' or 'thee' or 'w' sounds as 'v' sounds (no 'w' in Russian or Ukrainian). But when S'poreans are lazy, we basically read words with 'th' as 'd' or 't'. Less effort to read those words🤷‍♀️ Almost mispronounced 'tough'👀 No idea how I got an A for GCSE English -- but the rule of thumb is same letter combos may have different sounds. -gh can be a silent-ish sound, or a soft f sound. (also also if you cheat on someone you're basically shitting on someone because both are equally rude -_-)

Another really interesting thing to talk about is the fact that a whole generation in Sweden are basically growing up speaking Swenglish as a native language. The amount of English that Swedish speakers use is crazy. Sometimes it's vocabulary that comes more naturally in English, but often whole English phrases are used to indicate a change in tone or a joke. Usually the English phrase will follow 'liksom', or 'typ', or 'man ba''.

the "Wiking" reminds me of how my boyfriend sometimes mixes up v and w when speaking english (he's Polish not Swedish tho heh)

We have the same problem with Z/S as we have with W/V. We have very few words with the letter Z in Swedish, and we just pronounce Z the same way we pronounce S. "Zoo" becomes 'soo' for example :)

Love your language! Your English is excellent! 😊

Tack så mycket, jag tycker mycket om Diana videor !! Henk fran Nederlandska!

Tack för videon! I really love your content, you make it look so effortless. Spanish is my native tongue and I struggle with the vowels pronunciation. Your mini panic attack over Though/thought/tough made me laugh a lot as I remembered an interview with Joaquin Phoenix where he said that he could understand Spanish but struggled to identify/know the difference between Ajo/Ojo/Hoja. 😂

Based on the occuring difficulty with saying English th-sounds, this could be what one tree up to three trees could end up like in Swenglish: One tree, two trees, tree trees. ------ And thanks for a great video, with a fun topic! I am a Swede myself, who (I hope 🙂) do not sound particularily Swenglish when I normally speak English. I do however occasionly practice my Swenglish a little, in case it ”comes in handy” in the future.

I really like your channel so much Fun Swedish

Thanks! I can now understand thebausffs

My Swedish girlfriend says, “jestuhday” (yesterday) which is cute to me. And at times struggles with the “ch” sounds. Also, I noticed when you said “Beard, beer, and bear,” it sounded like you were saying “bare” for bear. Maybe think of the word “pear” and not “pair”. It’s a shorter vowel. Bear vs bare. Very close in length but slightly different. I hope this helps. I’m learning a lot from your channel. I’m starting Swedish classes here tomorrow too. Tack för allt.

I'm an American living in Göteborg for 11 years now and have met only 2 Swedes at work who spoke such good English and their accents was nearly perfect American. Thought they were American too. Mind you they studied in the states for 4 years each.

Of course you have an accent when you speak a second language. I have met professors that had thick foreign accents in english and their first language was spanish, hindi and french so when some swedes have accents then it is normal. If you want to sound like you were born in England, US or Australlia then you have to put a lot of effort and a lot of years and for what? As long as we understand each other everything will be fine. :-)

Thanks for the video. Regarding though, thought and tough, I can certainly understand the difficulty here. There is no trick to keeping these straight except by memorizing them. On the flip side of the coin, it's absolutely mind-boggling that you have 6 words that can mean "before" or "last": före, förr, förra, förran, förut, innan. I still can't keep them straight as to when I should use each one.

The easiest way of hearing if you are lisening to The Tokens or the Swedish version of The Lion Sleeps Tonight by The Hounds is to watch out for the word VILLAGE because in one of them (guess which one) they say WILLAGE.

I can't believe the Swedes have a hard time with the ch sound. 😂😂

First of all, I absolutely love all of your videos!! You've had so many helpful tips and tricks that have helped me converse with my Swedish boyfriend! I'm not sure how helpful this might be but just in case it is, The "th" sound can be made like you're (gently) biting your tongue while trying to blow air out of your mouth. Though- "Th-o" As a shortened 'although': "He was nice, though he didn't hold the door open for me" In response to a question: "Do you have your phone?" "Yes, I don't have a charger though." Thought- "Th-au-t" The past tense of "think" "I thought you loved me" "I've thought about it, I want to move to Sweden!" Tough- "Tuff" "That's a tough conversation to have." "He was strong and tough" Thank you so so much for your videos! I hope you keep coming out with more. ❤️

Det med Wiking va kul. Aldrig tänkt på innan!!👍

I like when you speak with sweedish accent. It sounds so cool and beautiful imo

Swedes have an accent when they speak english. As both are foreging languages to me, it's easy to hear the diffrence.

I remembered the Ari Eldjárn's Stand Up while joking about how danish people are so proud of their english speaking and thinking the same as they don't have an accent. It's so funny, i recomend you to go and see it

Tack så mycket bra

I am Texan and developed a Swenglish accent after 7 years of learning lol

One of the nicest accents in the world and I think better English than many English people. Very few countries go CH like the English.

if I spoke swedish as good as you are with English i would be happy

Svengelska Is when you mix Swedish word and English words in the same sentence. For example "I måste go now" That you said whas swenglish is English with an Swedish accent.

I watched Kingsman: The Golden Circle (2017) and saw Eggsy's girlfriend (Swedish) speaking English nearly perfectly like an American.

There is one very noticeable svengelska thing that you didn't mention. The swdeds don't pronounce the z sound. The s in all these English words is pronounced as z in native English. is, was, present, easy, result, etc. The Swedes prounce it as usual s which is together with the ch (sh) sound are two very noticeable svengelska signs. There is more...

Very entertaining video, I enjoyed it from beginning to end. 😅 Indeed Svengelska sounds cute. Do not attempt to listen Greeks speaking english.. 😂 we call it Greeklish, mostly about writing greek with english letters (so there's no chance any foreigner ever to read it 😂) but our accent is horribe! Thank you for the effort for your videos! 😊

Haha! Very funny stories, thank you!

There something with Swedes speaking english... Like how they breath and pauses... I can't tell what is it exactly... But I'm loving it. They're like music to my ears.

these three words are advanced. Most people can get through. Though, I have thoughts of how this might get through tough thoughts.

The "Swedish accent" in English really depends on geography and what generation the person belongs to (40+ etc) - of course, also if the person is used to speaking Swedish with native speakers. The "Stockholmish" accent is iconic though. The "i" and other vowels. When conversing or listening to a Swede, you might also notice them using expressions and proverbs that are directly translated from Swedish into English. Some people also seem to drop the plural -s. I don't know why. Even as a Swede, I personally think it is annoying when people cannot speak "proper" English 🙂But most people are happy just that other people understand them.

Hej! I thought i'd help you out on the though, thought, tough problem! Though is used when you are speaking about a topic that has 2 contrasting sides. An example would be: She is very pretty, though she does have an attitude. Thought is when we think of something. It's the past tense of the verb to think. Tough is when someone or something is strong, or is brave and can endure a lot of pain, or if something is difficult. an example of these 3 ways to use it are: The meat is tough. The man was tough when he broke his leg. This problem is tough. I hope this helps, you are welcome to ask questions :))

Of course they do. With any foreign language, you can hear an accent. My dad is Swedish and has been living here for over 40 years. People that meet him for the first time can tell he isn’t from the USA.

I like the old man that's in the video struggling with the English. Still he isn't shy about it and just go on using Swedish words as it's actually the right word. Reminds me of a man shouting to some kids running around a cruising ship: "Don't Spring here!!" (don't run here!) Anyway, the best way to learn a new language must be to just jump into it and speak?

Sounds a lot like southern swedish to me, overall the video made me realise how good my pronunciation is, thank you!

Swedes are the best English speakers in the world! They speak better than native speakers! It is impossible to identify their accent. People love to make fun of Arnold Schwarzenegger or Sofia Vergara. But nobody can make fun of Noomi Rapace or Alicia Vikander.

The Swedish accident is definitely cute to me.

Your spanish accent is perfekto amado mio 👍

Accents are FUN :D I was told by a customer in Poland working for Volvo, that I had a very nice and understandable English... compared to their colleagues komming från Göttebörg! :D :D :D LOL, so my Swedish inflection is a little bit less pronounced :) But it's still there!

one particular letter that sells that the speaker is Swedish, is "g". For instance, the word "engine" is pronounced "enyine" and it sounds almost as "onion".

You could try these as a rough indicator of pronunciation: thow thort tuff ending sounds like throw port ruff

In Finland we have this thing called "Rally-English" or as in Finnish "rallienglanti"

First, the word "though" uses a soft th sound, like with the word 'the' , so: though = tho thought = thott tough = tuff

I had to go back and watch the "I don't think so" guy a couple more times. That is så funny! 😃

I have noticed Swedes say, for instance, ''song after The Beatles' instead of 'by The Beatles'. I understand it's 'efter' i Svenska. And 'text' instead of 'lyrics'. The same goes for us Czechs, Nederlanders, and probably other Europeans.

I like when Swedes speak English, but some of course, as your videos reports, have a really Swedish accent :) Doesn't matter though, there is worse things than that :)

Svengelska is when you blandar Engelska and Svenska hejvilt, not just uttaling them in svenska. That video you showed had better svengelska in the parts you didn't show, like "gå through the konstgjort vattenfall"

Im swedish and i dont have a swedish accent when speaking english but i do when i speak spanish

Highly appreciated your valuable thoughts information and live video. Now please let me take this opportunity granted to share with you my own journey and experience with you working with different communities from different culture from different background diversified portfolio language was never a barrier as long as you can convey your message to them .

I think Swedish English might be my favourite English accent.

I've realized that when my swedish teacher used to say "dis" instead of "this" :)

Great video! There's just one thing you mention that is not quite correct, and that is that the sound "ch" does exist in Swedish. It's just spelled differently as inte the word "foRTSätta " 》 rts = ch

English speaker here! Here’s the pronunciation of the three words: Though = th-oh, as in ‘Joe’ or ‘dow’ in window. Thought = th-ought, as in ‘bot’ or ‘lot’ Tough = Tuff, as in ‘bus’ or ‘scruff’. It has the same pronunciation as ‘Rough’ (Ruff). 👍😁

That “no I don’t think so”. Made me laugh a little too hard.

That's true, even about my language. My native one is Russian, and sometimes I pronounce English 'A' like Russian 'А'

Most of us don't do that though, we adapt dialects, usually Wisconsin but for me... For some reason NO ONE can explain it's Glasgow. It might be the rolling R's. See I was involved in an R's accident and had it replaced with wheels.

5:25 well, some swedish dialects/accents pronounces "k/kj/tj" with a t in the beginning like the english "ch", but it's uncommon and most likely used in places far away from the capital, ex. Finland and Övre Norrland (northernmost part of sweden).

Im from sweden hej jag älskar korv see im from sweden

Honestly, I understand why you struggle. I hope this makes you feel better. I am a Southerner of the USA, where oh boy. We kind of struggle with ST, sounding like SHT depending on the stress or when expected to have a TH, with unintentionally pronounce it half of the time. HAVE to -> HAF TO, Just dropping consonants. Butter -> Budder, but sometimes replace D with a Y in You, but deeper in the throat just because of Appalachian phoneme mixture. Also, rhoticity and going further with it making a WASH, A warsh and can't tell the difference between war and wore. So I understand the pronunciation confusion all of the way. Also the sing songy nature sometimes shows itself as well. So it also leads to hilarious confusion with six and... E and i love to swap in sentences. SINCE, and SENSE = SAME outside of pitch or stress A LOT, ALLOT, oh wait T is silent on accident. Some words confusing like RURAL, PLURAL, I struggle. Anytime there is a TH, it's a game of " which is pronounced? Just lispy so I can relate to the struggle of a standard form. Just basically an accent forced into a case of speaking standard, but using action verbs galore, or mixing a vowel or a silent letter. Some of it can show when making hiccough A's constantly. When saying THANK YOU, it turns to THANGGYU ( G being closer to a German ). Throw stronger vowels competing for T and D, you're unintentionally going to mute the letters heavily. Just the relics of Irish influence showing itself.

7:35 Though = DOUUU Thought = TZOT Tough = TOFF ❤🥰

så roligt!

Moldova is misjudged. :D We have a big IT sector here and a lot of English-based learning. Including University courses that have some objectives (e.g. physics) delivered in English.

0:26 Swedes are listed among the top ten users of English as a foreign language and quite rightly. When it comes to speaking English, they are right up there among the best. They are, however, nowhere near as good as native speakers. This is especially true of the written language. Unfortunately, Swedes have been told so often that they are good at English that many of them think they can write it well. Very, very few can but many think otherwise. I've been an authorised translator from Swedish to English since 1987. At first, I used to agree to check what Swedes had written and suggest improvements. After a short time, I stopped doing that and told them straight away that I would re-write it in acceptable English if they wanted me to. This was and still is quicker than crossing out most what they've written and replacing it with grammatical, correctly spelt and clearly expressed English.

bra video, tack! :)

my grandmother spoke with the Swedish accent

Another thing I've noticed is the Z sound. Swedish doesn't have one. I'm around a bunch of Swedish-speakers (svenskfinland) and when they speak English, Zoom becomes "tsoom", zombie becomes "tsombie" etc.

Hej, what’s the model Airplane video called? :)

I dont tink så😂😂😂😂really got me

Do you not also prounounce Z as S? So "Everything is amazing" becomes "Everything is amasing."